AMD's new RX 480 $200 graphics card is out and delivers GTX 970/R390 performance as promised. However, there are some conflicting reports of the new Polaris GPU drawing more power from the PCI-e slot than it is rated. According to Tom's Hardware, the RX 480 draws 86 watts peak from the motherboard's PCI-e slot although the official ceiling is 75 watts.

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AMD’s Radeon RX 480 draws an average of 164W, which exceeds the company's target TDP. And it gets worse. The load distribution works out in a way that has the card draw 86W through the motherboard’s PCIe slot. Not only does this exceed the 75W ceiling we typically associate with a 16-lane slot, but that 75W limit covers several rails combined and not just this one interface.

With peaks of up to 155W, we have to be thankful they're brief, and not putting the motherboard in any immediate danger. However, the audio subsystems on cheaper platforms will have a hard time dealing with them. This means that the "you can hear what you see" effect will be in full force during load changes; activities like scrolling may very well result in audible artifacts.

After Tom's Hardware published their report, other websites such asPCPer followed up with their own testing and reported similar findings:

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The results are compelling: at stock settings the RX 480 is 160+ watts on average and spikes to 170 watts several times.

Taking a closer look reveals that the motherboard PCI Express connection is supplying 80-84 watts of power over the +12V rail continuously, while the +3.3V rail hovers just below 5 watts. This is definitely a concern for the RX 480 design, but to what degree?

Additionally, there are some users that reported potential issues with their motherboards that arose after using the RX 480 in their systems:

Keep in mind both of those reports do not 100% confirm the problem is the RX 480 but given the reported issues with it's power draw and these users boards experiencing problems after installing an RX 480, there is a strong possibility that it is the cause.

1) The RX 480 meets the bar for PCIe compliance testing with PCI-SIG. //edit: and interop with PCI Express. This is not just our internal testing. I think that should be made very clear. Obviously there are a few GPUs exhibiting anomalous behavior, and we've been in touch with these reviewers for a few days to better understand their test configurations to see how this could be possible.

2) Update #2 made by the OP is confused. There is a difference between ASIC power, which is what ONLY THE GPU CONSUMES (110W), and total graphics power (TGP), which is what the entire graphics card uses (150W). There has been no change in the spec, so I would ask that incorrect information stop being disseminated as "fact."

We will have more on this topic soon as we investigate, but it's worth reminding people that only a very small number of hundreds of RX 480 reviews worldwide encountered this issue. Clearly that makes it aberrant, rather than the rule, and we're working to get that number down to zero.

/edit for absolute factual clarity.

We're awaiting AMD's full official response which should hopefully be coming soon.

UPDATE: TechPowerUp contacted AMD and received the following official response:

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"As you know, we continuously tune our GPUs in order to maximize their performance within their given power envelopes and the speed of the memory interface, which in this case is an unprecedented 8 Gbps for GDDR5. Recently, we identified select scenarios where the tuning of some RX 480 boards was not optimal. Fortunately, we can adjust the GPU's tuning via software in order to resolve this issue. We are already testing a driver that implements a fix, and we will provide an update to the community on our progress on Tuesday (July 5, 2016)."

User Feedback

The poster who lost a PCI-E slot is correct in that its very strange that the 2nd slot still works (PCI_E for x16 is on CPU, not southbridge though). You would expect that if one slot died that all would be dead. They both share the same power circuitry.

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The poster who lost a PCI-E slot is correct in that its very strange that the 2nd slot still works (PCI_E for x16 is on CPU, not southbridge though). You would expect that if one slot died that all would be dead. They both share the same power circuitry.

Indeed but AMD has pretty much acknowledged the issue and said they'll address it in a driver update. I'm not quite sure what they will do via drivers to accomplish this and whether it will affect performance in anyway.

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On July 5th they will supposedly issue a driver level fix. Anyhow, with some sleuthing I found a rogue AMD engineer discussing Polaris, enjoy:

Having spanish as my first language and looking at this crap, I don't know if killing you for such a fake or thanking you for the good laugh I got out of this crap is the right choice to proceed xD
He is saying so many stupid shit that it's simply hilarious!

So I'm a recently father of 1 and struggling military personnel. No need for more details. I'm building a "gaming desktop" out of parts I'm collecting out of other people's trash basically. Running on all 2012 standards. currently I'm using a AMD Athlon II x4 clocked at 2.6 GHz on a Pegatron M2N78-LA (Violet6) motherboard with 500Gb of space and a Zotac Nvidia GT 640. I'm really proud of this setup so far because the overall price of the desktop is currently sitting at $10 for the Arctic Silver to replace the old thermal paste. The main thing I'm wanting to know from this community is whether or not the AMD Phenom is a decent processor. On paper it looks fine, but i have never built with it before, therefore I'm uncertain. Also if anyone knows of a cheap cheap MOBO that is still high quality and has 4 DIMM slots and preferably at least AM3+.

Hello all! Im posting this here in hope to receive some orientation or help regargind my egpu project.

I have my old and trusted Acer 5750G and I’m still using it everyday for work. I’m a photographer and it has worked quite well with some upgrades:
-Upgraded i5 to i7 2630qm.
-Upgraded ram, 8gb to 16 gb.
-Upgraded HD to SSD.

Some facts:
– I have the unlocked bios so I was able to set the mpci port as “hot pluggable” and I can also deactivate the dedicated nvidia 630m from the bios itself.
– I have bough this case [PCIe PCI-E EXP GDC External Laptop Video Card Dock / Laptop Docking Station (Mini PCI-E interface Version) ] that will arrive home in 10-15 days.
– I have ordered a wifi usb card.
I was thinking in getting a nvidia 1060 6gb and plug it to my old laptop using the mpci port. I ask for your advice and knoledge regarding this:
1- Is this a good card choice?
2- Will I face any problem with my setup or there is something important I should take into consideration?
3- Will software that uses CUDA (photoshop and premiere, for example) get reinforced with the new card?
4- How much processing power will get lost for the “small” port I will be using?
Thanks a lot again, and sorry for my english mistakes!!

So now that we've had ample time to digest all the new AMD Vega 56/64 reviews and information, lets start a discussion about them. Performance wise, the Vega 56 more or less equals a GTX 1070 while the Vega 64 lines up with a GTX 1080. However, to many people's dismay, the Vega 64 is far too overpriced with the cheapest one currently available on Newegg being an XFX one for $689 which is nearly the same price as a GTX 1080 Ti but about 35-40% slower.

In addition, both the Vega 56 and 64 use more power than their counterparts and this especially applies to the Vega 64 with it nearly consuming twice as much power as the GTX 1080. Some of the reasons I've read over the internet from Vega buyers for their purchases are the ability to utilize their FreeSync monitors as well as some Linux uses.

I know our community here also utilizes desktop GPUs for eGPU uses and AMD does support eGPU now so with that in mind, do you plan to purchase a Vega 56 or 64 and if so, why?

NVIDIA Turing RTX GPU
45 members have voted

1. Do you plan to purchase an NVIDIA Turing GPU (RTX 2070/2080/2080 Ti)?

Yes I plan to purchase one of the new RTX GPUs or have already put in a pre-order for one.

I'm waiting on reviews/benchmark analysis before I make a decision.

I'm going to hold on to my current graphics card and wait on the 7nm cards to be released.